The likely winners of money in a privacy lawsuit related to Google Buzz include groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the YMCA of Greater Long Beach — but not the organization that actually brought the matter to the attention of the Federal Trade Commission.

Reuters

Google co-founder Sergey Brin at the unveiling of Buzz in 2010

Back in September, Google agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that the Buzz social-networking service violated users’ privacy. This week, lawyers in the case agreed to a list of 12 organizations that would divvy up that money.

Most prominent on the list are the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, both of which will get $1 million, as well as the University of California at Berkeley, which will get $900,000 divided among two of its technology-law projects. The Long Beach YMCA will get $500,000 to educate young people about privacy, and a small group called Youth Radio will get $50,000 for similar work.

But some major privacy groups didn’t make the cut, and they and several of the plaintiffs have filed objections asking the court to take another look. Among them: the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which submitted a complaint about Google Buzz to the FTC in February. The complaint alleged that Google was violating users’ privacy by automatically exposing their email contacts when it launched its social-networking service.

As part of the FTC investigation that stemmed from EPIC’s complaint, Google this week agreed to a consent decree that requires it to submit to privacy audits for the next 20 years, among other things.

The lawsuit, which was filed in March, made similar allegations of privacy violations. The September settlement called for about $2 million to go to plaintiffs’ attorneys and the rest to go to organizations focused on Internet privacy or privacy education. The settlement agreement said Google and the attorneys should “mutually agree” on recipients of the money.

In its objection, EPIC says the attorneys in the lawsuit relied on the organization’s work but then excluded it from getting any settlement award money. “There has never been, nor is there likely to be” an applicant “who is more deserving of an allocation from a settlement fund,” the organization wrote in its filing.

Google declined to comment on the matter. EPIC did not respond to requests for comment on its complaint. One of the attorneys in the class-action suit said they would file a response to the court next week.

Those who are objecting also point out that half the groups getting money in the settlement already are partially funded by Google. One of the recipients, the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, “receives so much money from Google that it has actually agreed to refrain from all litigation involving Google,” three plaintiffs write in their objection, pointing to the Stanford center’s own online documentation.

These issues raise “red flags,” the objectors say, suggesting that Google sought to keep money from certain privacy groups it found problematic and funnel money to other organizations.

“EPIC did the hard legal work which led to the investigation,” said Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy, another group seeking funds from the court. During negotiations this fall on the settlement, he says, “Google was aware it was in the final stages of having to swallow an elaborate and far-reaching” FTC ruling brought on by EPIC. “Why would you want critics to get funding?”